Fury Over Raid Isolates Israel

Fury Over Raid Isolates Israel

STANBUL - Turkey is seething with fury at its closest allies - Israel and the United States - after Israel's killing of at least nine peace activists, four of them Turks, on a Turkish-flagged vessel seeking to break Israel's years-long blockade of Gaza.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of a "massacre," warning, "Israel risks losing its closest ally in the Mideast if it does not change its mentality." By "mentality," Erdogan meant Israel's right-wing Likud coalition.

Few agree with him. Britain's new pro-Israel prime minister, David Cameron, called the Gaza siege, "completely unacceptable." UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Israel was "punishing civilians," a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.

A leading Israeli thinker, Uri Avnery, notes, "The Gaza blockade does not isolate Hamas. It isolates Israel."

The Obama administration blocked UN condemnation of Israel, further infuriating the Muslim world against the United States. This after the U.S. insulted Brazil and Turkey by sneeringly dismissing their sensible plan to diminish Iran's uranium stockpile.

Canada's conservatives backed their ideological allies in Israel.

The world condemned Israel. Israel's right wingers and their bunker mentality sailed the beleaguered nation into a political ambush that even the Wall Street Journal, the Likud Party's leading U.S. voice, termed "one of Israel's worst public relations disasters in years."

Netanyahu reportedly ignored his cabinet secretary, Zvi Hauser, who warned against using force to stop the peace flotilla. The maritime fiasco further deepened Israel's growing isolation.

Turkey has long been Israel's strategic ally and sole friend in the Muslim world. The Ottoman Empire had an honourable tradition of sheltering Jews from Christian persecution. Turkish-Israeli trade is close to $4.5 billion; some 80,000 Israeli tourists safely vacation annually in Turkey.

Until Prime Minister Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, or AK, was elected in 2007, real power in Turkey was wielded from behind a facade of parliamentary democracy by hardline, right-wing generals of its powerful, 510,000-man armed forces.

Turkey's brass have overthrown four governments since the Second World War and once ousted Erdogan from office. They particularly hate his AK party, which espouses principles of Islamic welfare, cuts in defence spending, friendship with Greece and joining the EU.

Turkey's generals, and their allies in the security establishment, courts and academia, are militant secularist Kemalists who detest religious and political Islam, scorn Arabs, and are ideologically close to Israel's right-wing military establishment. Israel has sold Turkey billions in arms deals, producing huge commissions for both sides.

Israel's crack air force trains in Turkey and had been planning to use Turkish airspace to attack Iran. The two nations' intelligence agencies co-operate closely.

After a series of intrigues collectively know as "Ergenekon," the government has broken up cabals of far-right Turkish officers and civilian plotters, averting another military coup. Turkey's bullying military has been largely pushed out of politics.

Further

Academics are increasingly, ingeniously fighting back against an Orwellian "Professor Watchlist" aimed at exposing "radical" teachers. The list has inspired online trolls to name their own suspects - Albus Dumbledore, Dr. Pepper, Mr. Spock - and a Watchlist Redux to honor not trash targets from Jesus to teachers daring to "think critically about power." Now 100 Notre Dame professors have asked to join the list in solidarity, proclaiming, "We wish to be counted among those you are watching."